


You'll Catch His Cold

by jovishark



Series: Southrim Bits [1]
Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, South Park
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Threats of Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 14:02:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7511135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jovishark/pseuds/jovishark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Craig really doesn't like to think about the context of his job. But, then again, neither does Clyde.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You'll Catch His Cold

**Author's Note:**

> a little bit of what may eventually become the skyrim/south park fic! i havent honestly decided what im going to do with all of this yet. but this was written to match a comic from my livejournal and i hope you guys like it!

Clouds have begun to set in by the time Clyde hears footsteps behind him. As always, he'd been instructed to wait near the meeting site, and not follow close enough to be seen. Craig was very meticulous about his professional appearance in the way of communication. Presentation, Clyde couldn't quite decide what he was going for. Did a bloodstained, ragged, sleep-deprived assassin look professional or amateur? And what, for that matter, was the right way to behave during a consultation with one?

He wondered absently if people got nervous talking to assassins. He knew that he sure would if it wasn't Craig; He would be afraid of all of those sharp knives and what they could do with them. In all reality he still very much should be afraid. But, in what was most likely a misinformed show of loyalty, Clyde trusted Craig not to hurt him like he had promised to so many times before. _He's just messing around_ , Clyde would always think to himself, _he would never actually chop me up into little pieces and eat them. That's just silly._

Like with most things, it wasn't as silly as Clyde liked to believe.

"Come on." A gruff voice says from his side, tapping his arm. Gravel crunches beneath Craig's boots as he continues to walk away. Clyde follows enthusiastically behind him.

"We got our job?" He asks, maintaining a safe distance from his taller friend. A fat raindrop splats directly onto his nose and he falters, wiping it away before giving a cursory glance upward.

"We did." Craig reaches into a pouch sewn onto the back of his belt. His thin fingers produce an impressive stack of parchment notes, each smeared across with flaking brown stains. All except for the last one, the newest one, which he hands back to Clyde. Clyde looks down to the note in his hands, opens it, and stumbles along the neatly scripted words in his head.  
  
_Your target - Short battlemage, curly red hair. Don't be fooled by his cunning tricks or his fire._  
_Take him out as brutally and painfully as you can. Bring me his bloodied Amulet of Julianos as proof, and you will receive your payment._  
  
"Wow. What did he do to this guy to deserve this, huh?" Clyde folds the note back up and tucks it into Craig's waiting hand. "Sleep with his wife? Kill his kids?"

"Freed his traveling companion."

"Yeah, wh-. Freed? Like, he wasn't there on his own will?"

"Apparently not."  
Clyde stops in his tracks to ponder this briefly, looking down to the moistening dirt beneath his boots. The rain picks up speed. He feels an unsettling weight at the juncture of his heart and the outside of his chest, and he recognizes it easily. Craig causes it more often than he'd like to admit.

"This isn't right." Clyde says, starting to walk after Craig again, staring up into the grey canvas of his hood. "I don't think you should kill this mage."

"That's funny." He hears from behind that hood, no hint of a smile or a laugh in his words.

"I'm serious, Craig. I think what he did was right. If that guy was being taken around against his will, it's not right to kill the one who freed him."

The trees around them thicken, untouched by axes and destructive hands. Craig steps gracefully over a fallen log, where Clyde stumbles and nearly trips, trying hard to make his case. The rain hesitates in the cover of the forest, where the branches catch the drops that come down before they can hit the dirt below. Craig's steps are swift and far inbetween, to which Clyde's stubbier legs are having a hard time following. Craig only hums in response to his badgering. With his intent so far unrecognized, Clyde feels a swell of bravado pinch his stomach.

"In fact, I won't let you kill him."

Now Craig pauses, elongated steps coming to a stiff halt as he turns to face Clyde. Clyde's look is defiant, fist balled at his sides.

"You won't let me?" Craig repeats, to which Clyde nods. "You won't let me."

"That's right."

"I am going to illustrate to you, as accurately as I can, what is going to happen if you don't let me." Craig reaches up to pull his mask off of the bottom half of his face, exposing his pointed nose and scarred cheeks to the cold fog. Clyde steps back as he comes forward, leaning down to eye level, fingers coming to wrap around Clyde's thick wrists.  
"First, I am going to take your arms. These ones, right here," He holds up one of Clyde's wrists and shakes it. "and I am going to cut them off."

"No..."

"Yes. I am. I'm going to cut them off, and I am going to beat you with them. Then, while you're battered on the ground, I am going to make you hold a knife." His gaze is as even and composed as his tone, and Clyde is held distracted as the steely hilt of a dagger is pressed into his palm. "And you're going to kill him."

"No way!"

"Oh, yes. I am going to use your hand to stab this mage again, and again. And you won't be able to look away. Is that something you want, Clyde."

"I, I don't-"

"Is that something you want." It is much less of a question and more a command. Clyde squeezes his eyes shut to avoid that solid gaze from getting too far into his soul.

"No!"

Craig takes his knife back, slipping it into the sheath at his hip. He lets go of Clyde's wrist, which comes to rest defensively against his broad chest as Craig steps away from him.

"Then don't you dare try to question me again."

“Alright, alright.”

Pitter-pattering of raindrops falling hard against the trees disguise the sound of Craig walking away. Clyde stares mutely after him, steps stuttering before finally following again.

The forest clears soon enough, dead trees and thick roots tumbling over the rocky beginning of a cliff that drops down into a valley. Clyde didn't remember them being atop a mountain range. The northwestern mountains separating Skyrim from High Rock jutt into the sky in the distance, blanketed by a ruddy fog that settles deep into the trees below and masks the sky from any early morning sunlight that can break through. A rustling of fabric brings Clyde's attention back up from the cliff.

Craig's hood falls back to fold onto his shoulders, revealing silky dark hair cropped short at the bottom. Wind drifts by gently at first, then begins to blow harder against them. It carries the rain into their faces and harder onto their backs in its wild movement through the trees. Craig is approaching the end of the cliff, and Clyde comes forward again to stand strong in the pressure of the wind.

"Wait!" He calls to Craig, over the whistling in their ears. "We're not... actually going to kill that mage, are we?"

"Oh, we're not." Craig's hand comes down from his collar to his hip, resting both fists alongside twin daggers in his belt. The sound of humor in his voice makes ice crystals grow sharp in Clyde's belly. They pinch and poke harder as he turns to face the shorter man. "I am."

Clyde stares on at Craig's grin, which can only really be described as sinister, eyes following as it disappears with the rest of him over the side of the cliff. Laughter echoes through the valley and travels on the wind upward into Clyde’s face, far colder and more abrasive than the weather. The sound dissipates with the crows flapping away.

The wind blows strong and the rain falls hard, and Clyde feels nothing but fear prickling on his skin.


End file.
